Layered materials such as nanoclays have increasingly been finding uses in such varied applications as fillers in polymer compositions, catalytic supports, selective adsorbents, molecular vessels, and the like. The properties of many layered materials can be adjusted by intercalating organic molecules in the gallery spacing between their layers. The use of appropriate intercalants can, for example, enhance the dispersability of a nanoclay in a polymer matrix and/or enhance the compatibility of a nanoclay with a particular polymer matrix. Graphite oxide is another layered material having the ability to expand unidimensionally along its c-axis during an intercalation process. However, some forms of intercalated graphite oxide can undergo substantial expansion and delamination in the c direction upon heating and/or have a tendency to collapse into a material having smaller spacings between the layers if the intercalants are removed. Additionally, when graphite oxide is used as a filler in polymer composites, excessive sliding of its component sheets can lead to poor physical properties. It would thus be desirable to have an intercalated graphite oxide material in which interlayer spacing distances could be tuned and in which the layered structure is less susceptible to delamination and sliding between its component sheets.
Graphite oxide intercalated with cationic surfactants is disclosed in Matsuo, Y.; Niwa, T.; Sugie, Y. Carbon 1999, 37, 897-901. Graphite oxide intercalated with n-hexadecylalkylamine is disclosed in Matsuo, Y.; Watanabe, K.; Fukutsuka, T.; Sugie, Y. Carbon 2003, 41, 1545-1550. Silylated graphite oxide is disclosed in Matsuo, Y.; Fukunaga, T.; Fukutsuka, T.; Sugie, Y. Carbon 2004, 42, 2113-2130. The surface modification of graphite oxide with neutral primary aliphatic amines and amino acids is disclosed in Bourlinos, A. B.; Gournis, D.; Petridis, D.; Szabó, T.; Szeri, A.; Dékány, I. Langmuir 2003, 19, 6050-6055. The use of derivatives of graphite oxide to study its structure is described in Lerf, A.; He, H.; Forster, M.; Klinowski, J. J. Phys. Chem. B1998, 102, 4477-4482 and He, H.; Riedl, T.; Lerf, A.; Klinowski, J. J. Phys. Chem. 1996, 100, 19954-19958.